Obama mocks Congress on highway spending

President Barack Obama openly mocked Congress on Tuesday for failing to fix the looming shortfall in the federal Highway Trust Fund — and took some shots at House Speaker John Boehner’s threats to sue him for overstepping his powers.

“I haven’t heard a good reason for why they haven’t acted,” Obama said of the lawmakers in a speech in front of the Key Bridge, which connects Washington to Arlington, Virginia. “It’s not like they’re busy with other stuff.”

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The mockery was reminiscent of the all-out sarcasm the president has used lately to attack congressional Republicans’ attitudes toward climate change, but this time he turned it to another of his perennial themes: boosting infrastructure spending to create jobs.

Obama noted that soon, money derived from the trust fund is supposed to go toward repairing the bridge. But the fund itself, which provides more than half of many states’ road construction and repair budgets, is set to begin running dry in August, and Congress has yet to settle on short- or long-term fixes. The administration has said 700,000 jobs are at risk if Congress fails to act.

“That’d be like Congress threatening to lay off the entire population of Denver or Seattle or Boston,” Obama said. “That’s a lot of people.”

The administration has put forward a $402 billion, four-year transportation bill that would be partially paid for with revenues from tax reform, a long shot in the current Congress. But Obama said he would continue to push his idea.

Speaking in front of a bridge named after the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner” three days before the Fourth of July, Obama framed his agenda as one of “economic patriotism” that would help the country keep up with other economic powers, like China and Germany.

“It shouldn’t be controversial,” Obama said of infrastructure spending. “It hasn’t been controversial in the past.”